poetry is as much about the reader as the writer. a repsonse, of any & all variety, is the desired effect. recognition, confession, tumble, double take, memory, assent. if you think a poem is about you, it probably is.

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

The Nightly Savage

(for Frank O’Hara)

These are your streets. I see you leaving buildingsentering bars, the remodeled Cedar where I drink vodka then gin then vodka again (an addictive allusion) and! carefully extract this and that while

I look for you on these streets. Walk the length of 2ndlistening for open windows, the late late show (playing Alice Adams, Bebe Daniels, James Dean?) and promisesof scrambled eggs in the morning, waiting to ask

would you love me? (am I a person you would love aftera party?) waiting for snow, waiting for rain, waiting for fingers like doves. Grace! Fortune! Be damned! These words are for you, these streets I will travel, as always.

4 Comments:

Holy, holy crap!!I second that toast. Are there enough drinks in the world to toast it? Are there enough sweet and melancholy ways to remember someone you miss? Or too many assassins trying to relegate that someone to history?